UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
note-book the fact that there is none. It is sad that the hymnologist, to whom this fact may be yet unknown, should be obliged, after citing the peaceful example of the aviary, to reiterate the lesson that 'tis a shameful sight when critics of one progeny fall out and chide and fight.[1] Really they should remember that their office is to instruct; and if so, surely not by precept alone. If the monitors of the poetic school go together by the ears in this way in sight of all forms at once, what can be expected of those whom they were appointed (though God only knows by whom) to direct and correct at need? The dirtiest little sneak on the dunce's seat may be encouraged to play some blackguard's trick on better boys behind their backs, and so oblige some one who had no thought of bullying or of noticing such a cur to kick him out into the yard and cleanse the old school of scandalous rubbish. And what may not one of the head-masters (there are more than one in this school), at their next quarterly visitation, say to such a couple of monitors as this?
- ↑ I cannot help calling just now to mind an epigram—very rude, after the fashion of the time, but here certainly not impertinent but pertinent—cited by Boswell on a quarrel between two "beaux;" the second stanza runs thus, with one word altered of necessity, as that quarrel was not on poetry but on religion:—
"Peace, coxcombs, peace! and both agree;
A., kiss thy empty brother;
The Muses love a foe like thee.
But dread a friend like t'other."
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